Cooking Chicken Meat for a Puppy

Chicken-based dry and canned pet foods are a staple of every pet food aisle everywhere, but a homecooked breast smells and tastes like love to a puppy of any age. While he shouldn't necessarily have it every day, cooking chicken meat for a puppy is safe, done right.

Step 1

Wait until your puppy is 8 weeks old at the very youngest -- ideally, wait until he is about 12 weeks old. This is the age at which puppies start cutting their permanent teeth, and they need to be chewing food that offers some resistance.

Step 2

Consult your vet or breed-specific literature about portion size. The amount of chicken meat that you should give your puppy depends on his age, size, growth rate and breed.

Step 3

Remove chicken from the bone before feeding it to your puppy. Your dog can consume a raw chicken bone, but a cooked bone splinters, making it hazardous. While a puppy can eat raw chicken bones, more than one or so per week can lead to constipation.

Step 4

Cook chicken meat for your dog by boiling it without seasoning. While dogs in the wild consume raw meats, such meats can contain bacteria and spread food-borne illnesses that would be eliminated during cooking. Boiling makes it relatively safer to eat than raw meats. Boiling times vary, so before feeding chicken to your puppy, cut it down the middle to make sure no pink is visible inside.

Step 5

Offer the chicken to your puppy with a small amount of grains such as cooked rice, and a small amount of vegetable matter such as boiled carrots. For example, one recipe may include two boneless chicken breasts, 1 cup rice, 1/2 pound of green beans, three carrots and one sweet potato.